


and my head told my heart

by pinklesbian



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bodyswap, Chronic Pain, Depression, Insecure Keith (Voltron), Insecure Lance (Voltron), Lack of Communication, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 18:53:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12538848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinklesbian/pseuds/pinklesbian
Summary: Keith and Lance accidentally swap bodies and have to deal with each other's unspoken hardships.





	and my head told my heart

**Author's Note:**

> this is mostly just me projecting onto keith lmao... give that boy some zoloft he needs it  
> i didn't really proofread this so lmk if you see any typos & sorry if any of it is ooc  
> (title is from winter winds by mumford & sons)

Keith groans in annoyance, the aching in his knee having stayed persistent all day. He flops onto the couch next to Pidge, who is scouring her tablet for information on how to remedy the situation they find themselves in. Well, him and Lance, mostly. 

Keith kneads his fingers into his leg around his knee, frowning at the wrongness of the visual:slender, tan fingers over long legs. Long jacket sleeves and blue jeans. 

This is entirely Lance’s fault.  

The whole team had been on a mission to infiltrate a Galra base, and Keith and Lance had split off to take out any guards. Only Lance had wanted to be nosy and poke around in different rooms, until they found one full of druids and one of them had zapped them with some sort of freaky Galra magic and now… 

Well. He was in Lance’s body. 

It was ridiculous and stupid and none of them could even fathom how it was happening. Nothing like this was recorded in any of the ship’s databases, and Pidge determined it was medically impossible. 

At the present, she was saying, “Well, what did they do at the end of Freaky Friday?” but Keith didn’t know what she was talking about, so he ignored her in favor of scowling at his—Lance’s—sore knee. How unfair that Lance went and hurt himself but Keith is having to suffer for it. 

“They learn to love and appreciate each other, duh,” comes Hunk’s voice, and Keith looks up to see him and Lance walking into the common room. He still startles when he sees himself; he doesn’t know how long he can take this for. 

“There’s my beautiful face!” Lance says, but it’s Keith’s voice and Keith’s body and it makes Keith feel deeply unsettled. 

Instead of voicing this, he chooses to say, “Your body is a piece of junk.”  

Lance gasps in offense, bringing a hand up to his chest. “My body is a temple! I’m not complaining about _your_ body, even though I can reach high shelves.” 

“You’re an inch and a half taller than me.” 

“Still! What are you even complaining about?”

“Your knee! What did you do to it? Did this happen recently?” 

Lance tilts his head in confusion, and then something clicks. “Oh, nah, that’s from like middle school. I have weak joints or something, I don’t know. You’ll get used to it, probably.”

Keith blinks. “Wait, it’s always like this?” Lance shrugs and settles down next to Pidge, with Hunk on his other side. 

“Yeah, I guess it’s always like that. Are _you_ always so tired? I feel like my legs are made of concrete. I just want to go to sleep.” 

Hunk and Pidge look from Lance to Keith with curiosity. He’s tensed up, but he clears his throat. “Uh, no. That must be all you.” 

Shit. He didn’t think this would happen. He feels anxiety crawling up his throat and twisting in his stomach. He desperately wants to extract himself from this conversation—thankfully, Coran intervenes. 

His voice chimes over the loudspeaker: “Keith—Lance? No, no, Keith in Lance’s body, please report to the med bay!” 

Keith swings his legs down to the floor and stands, wincing only slightly as he puts weight onto Lance’s bad leg. He mumbles a farewell to the other paladins and shuffles out of the room.

Hunk and Pidge chat about Freaky Friday for a few more minutes, as if it might reveal some sort of mystery cure to them. Lance half-listens, feeling too weighed down by Keith’s exhaustion to properly contribute. 

Hunk eventually picks up on this. “You doing okay?” he asks, nudging Lance in the ribs with his elbow. He nods, nudging Hunk back.

“Yeah, man, I just… am tired, you know? I don’t really get it. Maybe it’s because of the whole, ripped out of my own body thing. But…” he trails off, unsure of how to word what he wants to say next. “I don’t know. I just feel weird.” 

“Weird how?” Pidge asks, pulling up a notes document on her tablet. “Headaches? Nausea? Disorientation?”

“No, not like that,” Lance says, running his hands over his face. Keith’s skin is not nearly as soft as his own. “I don’t know. I thought Keith was always so pissy because that’s like, his personality, but I swear every little thing nearly sets me off into a rage. Like I’m gonna start at screaming at everyone any second. I just wanna lock myself in my room and sleep.” 

Pidge lowers her tablet slowly, looking at Lance with some emotion he can’t quite place. “I’m sure it’s just a side effect of the body switch. It’ll… probably go away.” 

“Yeah, Keith’s whole body must be angry. Maybe it’s the Galra part? They seem pretty angry… Not to generalize or anything,” Hunk adds, all very quickly. Lance surmises that he’s probably nervous and worried about the whole situation—he knows how Lance feels about Keith, how this is stressful for the two of them, and he doesn’t want to say anything to upset him. 

“Maybe,” Lance agrees, just to stop talking about it.

* * *

 

Keith has been living in Lance’s body for two and a half days now, and he’s still not used to the knee pain. He gripes about it to Shiro, to Pidge, to Hunk. But he holds back when Lance is in the room. 

Right now, he’s complaining to Shiro and Pidge as they sit at the dining table. Pidge muses about making some sort of brace for Lance.Keith whines, letting his forehead rest on the table beside his bowl of goo. 

“Wow, you’ve perfected your Lance imitation!” Hunk says loudly, prompting him to lift his head and turn towards the entryway. Hunk, Lance, Allura, and Coran have arrived, and Lance is pouting at Hunk. Seeing his own face pouting so dramatically makes Keith scowl. 

“Is something the matter, Keith?” Allura asks, looking genuinely concerned. She shows her feelings openly, and she experiences them with her entire heart. 

Lance snorts. “Besides, the, uh…” he gestures between himself and Keith. She offers a small smile in response, and seeing as Keith isn’t about to offer up any additional problems he’s having, she lets it go. The four of them head into the kitchen. 

Keith is tired of this. He wants his own body back. He’s sick of looking in the mirror and seeing someone else. He’s sick of feeling embarrassed as he undresses and tries not to look at himself. He’s sick of wanting to look. 

And he’s scared—of what Lance might be feeling right now. What might be going on in his head.

Before Keith can dwell on this any further, Lance and Hunk walk back into the dining room. Lance is laughing at something Hunk’s said, which also looks strange on Keith’s face. His eyes are closed, and he doesn’t see the chair that’s been pulled out in front of him. His foot connects with it and the bowl he’s holding tumbles out of his hands, hits the edge of the table, and falls to the floor, where it shatters. Porcelain shards and goo coat the floor.

Nobody says anything at first, too surprised and processing what’s just happened. Lance stares, stunned, at the mess by his feet. 

Hunk speaks up, saying, “Whoops. Good thing we have like a million bowls on this ship, right?” But Lance stays silent and unmoving. 

“Lance?” Hunk reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder. Lance snaps his head up. 

He blinks and tears spill over onto his cheeks. “Whoa, dude,” Hunk says, “It’s okay, really. It’s all good. Just sit down and I’ll get you another bowl.” 

“No,” Lance says, reaching a hand up to cover his eyes. “I-I don’t… I don’t know why I’m crying. This is… I…” 

Shiro is looking back and forth from Lance to Keith insistently. Keith watches this scene play out, eyes wide, horrified. He turns his eyes toward Shiro, who motions with his head toward Lance. Keith shakes his head, and pushes his chair away from the table forcefully. It scrapes against the floor, an ugly noise, and Lance lowers his hand to look at him. 

But Keith doesn’t meet his eyes, just turns and leaves the room quickly, feeling panic rise up and fill his lungs. Faintly, over the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears, he hears people say his name. He ignores them in favor of speeding up his walking until he’s sprinting. Lance’s long legs make this easier. When he reaches his bedroom door he places his hand on the sensor to open it, but it beeps at him angrily. He’s got it set so that it only opens with his handprint—his own. He growls in frustration and instead punches in the security code. 

When it opens, he steps inside, and when it closes, he slumps against it and sinks to the floor. He doesn’t want any of this to be happening. He doesn’t want anyone to know—doesn’t want Lance to know. He would rather have Lance’s hurt knee for the rest of his life than for the team to find out what goes on in his head. He hasn’t even been able to relax and enjoy Lance’s normal brain—he’s too anxious about Lance figuring out what’s going on with his own. 

He draws his knees to his chest and rests his forehead against them. He tries to take deep breaths, but they come in tight and shaky and shallow. It takes him what feels like hours to finally calm down enough to take a single deep breath, and then—

 

_Knock. Knock._

 

His pulse skyrockets again. He pushes away from the door as it opens. Of course Lance could open it, why did he come in here to hide, that was so stupid—

“So…” Lance says, looking down at Keith still on the floor. Clearly he expects Keith to respond, because he’s not continuing. But Keith doesn’t have anything to say, so he just stares up at him, wide-eyed. 

Lance sighs, and then he drops down next to Keith on the floor, crossing his legs as he does. “I feel like,” he starts, deliberating his words carefully, “we should talk.” 

“I’m sorry,” Keith blurts out. 

Lance laughs softly. “That’s not something you’ll hear coming out of my mouth very often. Um… why, exactly, are you sorry?” 

“I’m sorry that you have to deal with my shit. That’s not… I didn’t want that to happen. I thought maybe… it would be okay, for you.” 

“I don’t really understand.” 

Keith tips his head back and exhales slowly. “Okay. My… brain is messed up, or whatever. I have,” he swallows, closes his eyes, “major depressive disorder? Whatever. I’m depressed. I have depression. It makes me tired, and irritable, and emotional, and I have a hard time expressing my feelings and connecting to people, and sometimes I cry over dumb shit, and I yell, and I regret the things I say, and—“

“Whoa, Keith, breathe.” Lance’s hand is on his shoulder, and he realizes he’s close to hyperventilating. So he closes his mouth and inhales through his nose. Lance does it with him, deep, slow breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. 

“Okay.” 

“Okay?”

“I mean… thanks for telling me. You didn’t have to, like, we’ll switch back eventually and things would have gone back to normal. But… if this is normal for you, I kind of don’t want to switch back.”

“What? Why? You want to feel like that?”

“Well, no, but I don’t want you to either. I want you to be happy.” He’s looking away, and his blush is very evident on Keith’s pale skin. 

Keith cannot comprehend what Lance is saying. “Why?” 

“What do you mean, why?” He huffs, still avoiding Keith’s eyes. “I care about you! We’re friends!” he adds quickly. 

“Friends,” Keith says, unsure of why the word feels so dull and hollow. 

“Yeah, friends. So, I don’t want you to feel bad. I wish I could… help? Is there anything I can do?” 

Keith ponders this. “I don’t know. Not really? It’s… complicated. I mean… you probably don’t want to talk about how you’ve been feeling these past couple days, right?” 

“Uh, I totally could! I’m tired and angry and embarrassed because I just cried in the dining room—“ 

“But what about what you’re thinking? That voice in your head?” 

There’s a beat of silence. And another. 

“Um,” Lance starts. “There is kind of a voice, but… it’s not my own?” 

“What do you mean?”

“It’s more like, uh, the rest of the team. No, that’s wrong, it’s just one person. Shit, I don’t know why I’m lying, it’s—it’s you.”

“What? Me?” 

“Yeah, it’s you, and it’s like you’re telling me everything that’s wrong with me and I can’t even be annoyed about it because it’s all true—“

“No!” Keith says, louder than he meant to. He reaches out and grabs Lance’s hands with his own. “It’s not true, it’s just my fucking brain!” 

Lance looks up at him, making eye contact finally. It’s weird to be staring into your own eyes, Keith thinks, but he can’t look away. “I promise,” he says, tightening his grip on Lance, “nobody, not even me, thinks as badly of you as that voice is telling you. We wouldn’t pretend to like you if we didn’t. We all care about you.”

“Even you?” 

“Yeah, dumbass. Even me. I care about you. So much.” He swallows thickly, feeling suddenly embarrassed. Why is he laying all his feelings out there? What is he going to gain from this? Why—

Suddenly Lance is very, very close. Close enough that Keith can feel his breath against his lips, can see the violet in his own eyes. Close enough that if he angles his face slightly, their lips will touch.

So he does it. 

He nearly regrets it, when it feels like electricity is coursing through his body. He and Lance jump away from each other, gasping in pain. Lance falls to his back, clutching his head, and Keith’s vision goes out of focus. He closes his eyes, groaning.  
  
When the electricity stops, and he opens his eyes, Keith is staring at the ceiling with his hands pressed to his temples. He blinks the fuzz out of his vision and sits up slowly. He turns to check on Lance and gasps.

“Lance!” he shouts, reaching to shake his shoulder. “Look!”

Lance opens his eyes, and Keith has never been happier to see that bright blue. 

“Oh,” Lance mumbles. “Sweet.” Then he leans forward, cups Keith’s face in his hands, and presses their lips together firmly. 

Keith melts into it, reaching up to wrap his arms around Lance’s neck. He appreciates how soft Lance’s lips are, even though Keith in no way kept up with Lance’s many beauty regimes while they were swapped. Oh shit, is Lance gonna be mad about that? 

Keith is drawn out of his thoughts and out of the kiss by another series of knocks on the door. He and Lance stare at each other for a few seconds before Lance starts laughing and leans back on his hands. Keith stands to open the door, and he doesn’t know who he was expecting, but it wasn’t Shiro.

“Oh,” he says, looking at Keith quizzically. Then he sees Lance on the floor, and he says, “Oh?” 

Keith flatly says, “What.” 

Shiro raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t think you… Lance… would be in here?” 

Keith points a finger at himself. “I’m me again,” and he points at Lance, “And he’s Lance again. Everything’s back to normal.” 

The black paladin clearly doesn’t understand what’s going on, because he was expecting to find Keith in Lance’s body but instead he’s found both of them in their own bodies again with no indication of why or how that’s happened, and Keith evidently doesn’t feel like sharing. He says, slowly, “Okay… Good…?” 

“Yes,” Keith sighs, “Good. Okay. Thank you for stopping by. See you later.” And the door closes. 

Keith and Lance stay silent for a few moments, listening to see if Shiro is going to knock again. But all they hear is a muffled “Yeah, that’s Keith,” and very faint footsteps.

* * *

 “How’s my amazing and handsome boyfriend feeling today?” Lance sing-songs, draping himself over Keith’s shoulders. Keith huffs, facing going pink even though he should definitely be used to the cheesy stuff Lance says to him by now. 

 “I’m fine,” he says.

Lance hums in contemplation. “Fine-fine? Or don’t-want-to-talk-about-it-fine?” 

“Fine-fine,” Keith grumbles, quickly getting annoyed with this conversation. “I don’t know. Tired, maybe. I didn’t sleep well.” 

“How come?”

“I don’t remember.” That’s a lie. Keith knows it and Lance knows it, but Lance doesn’t know that what really kept Keith up was the dread festering inside him that the rest of the team is going to keep treating him like he’s broken, like he’s fragile, like he’s unstable, like he’s not fit to be a paladin of Voltron, and… Maybe they’d be right? 

But Keith isn’t ready to say these things to Lance. If he tries, his throat closes up and his eyes get misty and he wants to run away. They’ve talked about that, and Lance understands. He tries not to overstep Keith’s boundaries. 

So he just nuzzles against the side of his boyfriend’s head. “Okay.” Keith will find his voice some day. It's okay if today's not that day.


End file.
